Physics on Your Feet: Berkeley Graduate Exam Questions: or Ninety Minutes of Shame but a PhD for the Rest of Your Life!

Description

Physics on Your Feet (2nd Edition) is a significantly expanded collection of physics problems covering the broad range of topics in classical and modern physics that were, or could have been, asked at oral PhD exams at University of California at Berkeley. The questions are easy to formulate, but some of them can only be answered using an outside-of-the box approach. Detailed solutions are provided, from which the reader is guaranteed to learn a lot about the physicists' way of thinking. The book is also packed full of cartoons and dry humor to help take the edge off the stress and anxiety surrounding exams. This is a helpful guide for students preparing for their exams, as well as a resource for university lecturers looking for good instructive problems. No exams are necessary to enjoy the book! Cover Physics on Your Feet: Berkeley Graduate Exam Questions Copyright Dedication Preface to the Second Edition Preface to the First Edition How this book came about Other books How to use this book Acknowledgements Contents 1 Mechanics, Heat, and General Physics 1.1 Bouncing brick Solution 1.2 Slippery cone Solution 1.3 Roach race Solution 1.4 Spinning Earth Solution 1.5 Mechanical oscillator as a force sensor Solution 1.6 Hot-dog physics Solution 1.7 Ostrich egg Solution 1.8 Joker's pendulum Solution 1.9 Slinky magic Solution 1.10 Lightbulb and coal Solution 1.11 Comfortable walking speed Solution 1.12 Rotating dumbbell Solution 2 Fluids 2.1 Bubble physics Solution 2.2 Bubble and pressure Solution 2.3 Holey bucket Solution 2.4 Surprises in melting and solidification Solution 2.5 Shallow-water and deep-water gravity waves Solution 2.6 Tides Solution 2.7 Boat speed limit (hull speed) Solution 2.8 Floating in circles Solution 2.9 Boat displacement Solution 2.10 Temperature lapse in the atmosphere Solution 2.11 Angler's dilemma Solution 3 Gravitation, Astrophysics, and Cosmology 3.1 Olber's paradox: why is the sky dark? Solution 3.2 Gravitational shift of clock rates Solution 3.3 Photon fallout Solution 3.4 Planck mass and length scale Solution 3.5 Rotation of stars around the center of a galaxy Solution 3.6 Ultralight dark matter Solution 3.7 Detecting gravitational waves Solution 3.8 Dark matter trapped in the Earth Solution 4 Electromagnetism 4.1 Currents and magnetic fields Solution 4.2 Electromagnet design Solution 4.3 Field in a shield (with a coil) Solution 4.4 Multipole expansion Solution 4.5 Energy in a wire Solution 4.6 Earth's magnetic field angle Solution 4.7 Refrigerator-magnet science Solution 4.8 Spherical-cell magnetometer Solution 4.9 Magnetic force on a superconducting magnet Solution 4.10 Circuit view of atoms and space Solution 4.11 Magnetic monopole Solution 5 Optics 5.1 Rotating liquid mirror Solution 5.2 Stacking lenses Solution 5.3 Nanoparticle optics Solution 5.4 Diraction angle Solution 5.5 Diraction on an edge Solution 5.6 Black-body radiation Solution 5.7 Laser vs. thermal light source Solution 5.8 Correlation functions for light and Bose condensates Solution 5.9 Pulsed laser repetition rate Solution 5.10 Beamsplitter Solution 5.11 Rotating linear polarization Solution 6 Quantum, Atomic, and Molecular Physics 6.1 Magnetic decoupling of spins Solution 6.2 Level anticrossing Solution 6.3 Bound states in a potential well Solution 6.4 Hypothetical anomalous hydrogen Solution 6.5 Time-reversal in quantum mechanics Solution 6.6 Superconductivity vs. atomic diamagnetism Solution 6.7 Atomic desorption Solution 6.8 Lamb shift Solution 6.9 Van der Waals interaction Solution 6.10 Vacuum birefringence Solution 6.11 Nonmagnetic molecule Solution 6.12 Quantum mechanics of angular momentum Solution 6.13 Light shifts Solution 6.14 Optical pumping Solution 7 Nuclear and Elementary-Particle Physics 7.1 The number of elements in the periodic table Solution 7.2 Neutron anatomy Solution 7.3 Nonexistence of the dineutron Solution 7.4 Deuterium fusion Solution 7.5 Lifetime of the ground-state para-positronium Solution 7.6 Schwinger fields Solution 7.7 Cherenkov radiation Solution 7.8 Neutron optics Solution 8 Solid-State Physics 8.1 Transistors Solution 8.2 Magnetic domains Solution 8.3 Damaging diamond Solution 8.4 Nearest-neighbor defect in a crystal Solution 8.5 Fermi velocity in a metal Solution 8.6 Superuid transition of helium Solution 8.7 Frustrated spins Solution Appendix A Maxwell's Equations and Electromagnetic Field Boundary Conditions Appendix B Symbols and Useful Constants B.1 Symbols B.2 Useful constants References Index